Central Office Production Order or Corporate Official Production Order
The Central Office Production Order (COPO) was a back door around Chevrolet's performance limits and or special order special equipped vehicles.
If I am not mistaken, the request for chevrolet to start making COPO's came from Don Yenco.
I think in the early to mid 60's he was actually building corvairs and then later on camaros with high horse power 427 BBC motors and also installing body and interior mods, Kinda of like limited edition aftermarket brands. Once he started building these car, the orders came piling in and he could not keep up with the orders, so he asked chevy to build them due to the large market demand.
Well chevy had certain criteria and hp restrictions they had to follow so.
GM gave it a try, found out that the cars were found to be quite reliable and the orders in high demand followed.
Coming up with the means to shirt the restrictions was the invention of the term COPO.
A orporate Official Production Order was a car ordered by a high ranking GM official that usually came with few accessories and the biggest HP engine and tranny upgrade they could cram in the car.
My boy just found out he has a COPO 98 C5 Vette